Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

blog.hubspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 200 posts

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#141

Post by lsc »

Crito wrote: post #62
jaggederest wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed that they would be gasoline powered. The power to weight ratio of 2-stroke engines is ridiculous, and certainly plenty to handle the demands of this sort of vtol craft.

The problem with gas and this style of aircraft is that they would need to be hybrids, or else you would have a lot of weight dedicated to very complex transmissions. I think an all-electric fixed wing/helicopter hybridization would make more sense. VTOL is probably only strictly required at the consumer end, on the Amazon side they could do CTOL and cruise on the same wings.

>The problem with gas and this style of aircraft is that they would need to be hybrids, or else you would have a lot of weight dedicated to very complex transmissions.

I believe that on airplanes they often solve the problem of internal combustion engines being much more efficient in a narrow RPM band (with the constraint that transmissions tend to be heavy) by using a constant speed propeller[1] that spins at the optimal speed of the engine, and adjusts the blade pitch to adjust the speed of the vehicle.

I don't know if it would work on a VTOL type vehicle or not, but we've been using internal combustion engines for a while, and have reasonable work-arounds for many of their shortcomings.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_speed_propeller

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#142

Post by krallja »

lsc wrote: post #141
Crito wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with gas and this style of aircraft is that they would need to be hybrids, or else you would have a lot of weight dedicated to very complex transmissions. I think an all-electric fixed wing/helicopter hybridization would make more sense. VTOL is probably only strictly required at the consumer end, on the Amazon side they could do CTOL and cruise on the same wings.

>The problem with gas and this style of aircraft is that they would need to be hybrids, or else you would have a lot of weight dedicated to very complex transmissions. I believe that on airplanes they often solve the problem of internal combustion engines being much more efficient in a narrow RPM band (with the constraint that transmissions tend to be heavy) by using a constant speed propeller[1] that spins at the op…

Almost all helicopters have constant speed rotors and use the pitch of the blades to control all but 1 degree of freedom (the last is the pitch of the tail rotor blades, which directly controls the yaw in upright flight).

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#143

Post by ghaff »

downandout wrote: post #129

The CBS interview was primarily focused on Amazon's technology. It was only fitting that they show off something they are still tinkering with that shows what the future might be. The drones are easily possible - the technology already exists. If Amazon doesn't do it, lots of other private companies will. But I am a little shocked that this cool little announcement has brought Amazon's critics out of the woodwork. IM…

I don't really see it as about criticism of Amazon--though there was that tone in Lyons' piece. Amazon has a PR department and they did their job remarkably well in this case in that they succeeded in landing essentially a puff piece about future technological concepts related to fast parcel delivery with a supposedly serious journalistic institution the day before the busiest online shopping day of the year.

Kudos to Amazon PR. Not so much to 60 Minutes.

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#144

Post by dsuth »

37prime wrote: post #5

As soon as I saw the name Dan Lyons as the author, I son’t even bother reading it. His past articles are filled with nonsense.

Yeh, what a ridiculous beat-up piece. Nothing of substance.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll know to avoid in future.

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#145

Post by kgen »

downandout wrote: post #133
bandushrew wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across the US. it is a fantastic use of technology, I genuinely hope amazon manages to deliver.

> Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across the US. Not necessarily. When a new address comes up, a human operator might takes a look at a satellite image of the address and give the drone an appropriate location to land on the property. That data would then be stored. 15 seconds with a human, one time only, i…

It wouldn't even need a human operator from Amazon, I would gladly put a marker on a map to show the drone exactly where to drop it if it prompted me upon adding a new address/checkout.

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#146

Post by Crito »

krallja wrote: post #142
lsc wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem with gas and this style of aircraft is that they would need to be hybrids, or else you would have a lot of weight dedicated to very complex transmissions. I believe that on airplanes they often solve the problem of internal combustion engines being much more efficient in a narrow RPM band (with the constraint that transmissions tend to be heavy) by using a constant speed propeller[1] that spins at the op…

Almost all helicopters have constant speed rotors and use the pitch of the blades to control all but 1 degree of freedom (the last is the pitch of the tail rotor blades, which directly controls the yaw in upright flight).

My understanding is that quad/octo-rotor helicopters do not have constant speed rotors because they turn about by varying the relative speeds of each rotor. They don't have any sort of swashplate.

My understanding is that this simplification is more or less the entire point of quad-rotors, since otherwise a single big rotor would be much more efficient.

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#147

Post by gurumx »

samspenc wrote: post #2

Ouch, a bit harsh, but my first question after reading this was: why are Hubspot and its CEO so upset about the CBS piece?

I'm a dev at HubSpot and though I have no way of knowing this for sure, I don't think our CEO was involved in this blog post.

We have a lot of blog posts, and I don't think they're meant to represent the views of the company.

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#148

Post by infinotize »

durrrrrrr wrote: post #136
bandushrew wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that makes sense to me. Organising something like this in a controlled area like a campus must be a few orders of magnitude simpler than organising something like this across the US. it is a fantastic use of technology, I genuinely hope amazon manages to deliver.

If everyone has to go to a certain place to get these items, we could invent a revolutionary new idea. The shop.

You might even get to talk to a human while you're there!

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#149

Post by infinotize »

ljd wrote: post #6

It seems obvious to me that Bezos took this one public so early to garner public support so that the FAA can't just sit on it forever. All of Amazon's other initiatives didn't need some federal regulator to OK it before they could start selling it. I think this is an effective solution to getting a notoriously slow agency to move on an item. No one wants to be seen as stopping innovation, not even the FAA.

I really don't think the FAA is going to be in a panic over stifiling innovation after this. Probably more people are annoyed with the idea of drones buzzing over their property.

Re: First Victim of Amazon Drones: The Credibility of CBS and 60 Minutes

#150

Post by cglace »

Crito wrote: post #108
dragonwriter wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, Walmarts do not seem to exist inside of cities Walmarts don't exist in places where property values are high, as a means of keeping costs low. > If Walmarts were common in cities, then urban food deserts would not be a thing in the US Well, no; even if they had no effect on other existing businesses, regular Walmarts would have no effect on food deserts, as they don't carry fresh food. Super Walmarts do,…

Super Walmarts could certainly be justified for the population a Walmart in a city would have. Honestly I forgot non-Super Walmarts were still a thing, I haven't seen on in ages. Property value is definitely why Walmart ( particularly Super Walmarts) doesn't move into cities. Their deal is large sprawling buildings with even larger sprawling parking lots, that isn't the sort of thing that you stick into a city. They…

Really small walmarts have started popping up in city centers. One just opened up in midtown atlanta.
Post reply on HN